The Incredibles

Those Incredible Tories

Ciceronian themes permeate a popular family film.

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The most important line in The Incredibles belongs
to the villain, Syndrome: “When everyone’s super, no one will
be!”

Pondering this idea made me suddenly realise that The Incredibles is
suffused with a thoroughly Tory sensibility. By Tory I mean not the political
party once led by Margaret Thatcher but the old-fashioned political philosophy
drawn from Cicero, whose most famous English exponent was Edmund Burke and
whose most reliable extant voice is American columnist George F. Will.

For The Incredibles is truly Ciceronian. Cicero believed in the “Four
Personae” theory, which sees each person’s identity bound up
in four elements. One of those was special traits and talents.

For we must act in such a way that we attempt nothing contrary to universal
nature; but while conserving that, let us follow our own nature, so that
even if other pursuits be weightier and better, we should measure our own
by the rule of our own nature. (On
DutiesI.110)

Cicero’s whole political theory is based on this notion that there
are some people (with extra talent, extra intuition, and a semi-divine, extra-keen
understanding of natural law) who should be the natural ruling class of a
society. These, of course, were what the Roman patricians were supposed to
be (On
the Commonwealth I.35).

Cicero’s theory of societal origins is even more explicit: he believes
that men originally “wandered around the fields like beasts” depending
on brute force and not physical strength, when

a man—great and wise I am sure—became aware of the power latent
in man and the wide field offered by his mind for great achievements if
one could develop this power and improve it by instruction. Men were scattered
in the fields and hidden in sylvan retreats when he assembled and gathered
them in accordance with a plan; he introduced them to every useful and
honourable occupation, though they cried out against it at first because
of its novelty, and then, when through reason and eloquence they had listened
with greater attention, he transformed them from wild savages into a kind
and gentle folk (On
Invention, I;1–2).

Cicero believed that it took a “great man”—a superhero?—to
corral mankind and bring them into the all-important “social concord” of optimates and plebeians which
must be maintained in order to have a stable and long-lived society. (On
the Commonwealth, II.69a)

That social concord is upset in The Incredibles. All of the “supers” (strongman
Mr. Incredible and wife Elastigirl included) have been forced into hiding—stuck
in boring suburban neighborhoods, working in dead-end paper-pusher jobs,
unable to reveal their super-strengths, and generally suffering under a giant
burden of mediocrity. The Incredibles’ children, living under the surname
of Parr (literally, “equal.” Does equality mean dullness?), blessed
with powers of invisibility, force-fields, and super-speed, have to keep
their talents hidden. When son Dash complains that because he’s special
he can’t be fast, Mrs. Parr says, “Everyone’s special,
Dash.” He replies: “That’s just another way of saying nobody
is.”

The social concord threatened, villain Syndrome aims to bring it crashing
down. He is not a super, and as a child was rebuffed as a nuisance
by his hero Mr. Incredible. Syndrome subsequently devoted his life to developing
technologies that would allow him—and everyone else, regardless of
special talent—to be ”super.” (The film’s main plot
is about his efforts to demonstrate his superiority to the Incredibles and
to exact revenge for Mr. Incredible’s long-ago rejection of him.)

Syndrome’s attempts to be super have devastating consequences for
the city, but even he realises that he’s aiming at something else.
By raising everyone to the level of the supers, he will eliminate superheroism.
His great villainy in The Incredibles (besides the small-fry stuff
of trying to kill the family) is that he wants to artificially eliminate
the social concord and break down society as it is.

The Incredible family, then, represent the old order, the optimates of
their society, charged with ruling well and exercising their talents judiciously. The
Incredibles must therefore be in support of this anti-egalitarian political
philosophy. The runty, dull, mundane common people in The Incredibles can’t
be trusted: they’re seen as stupid and naïve enough to get rid
of their protectors, blinded by visions of punitive damages dancing in their
heads. Would you trust them to govern? If not, then you’re
like me, and you’re no fan of democracy.

That puts us between a rock and a hard place, doesn’t it? Small-“r” republicans
and small-“d” democrats are at odds. An authentic, Ciceronian
republican would have no part in any kind of egalitarian project like democracy
in which all have equal power. A true-blue democrat would never subscribe
to any notion that there are “special persons” out there with
some kind of innate qualification for rule.

Who says kids’ movies aren’t political? :::

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is a student
at the London School of Economics and Political Science.